Sunday, 24 April 2011

Dinner with BBC News Editor, Jeremy Hillman

Following on from my dinner last year with David G Allan (Editor for BBC Travel), last Tuesday night I was cordially invited to dine with another of the very talented and reputable people from the BBC.

This time, the Guest of Honour visiting Singapore was Mr Jeremy Hillman, who was here for the launch of a new business section on BBC.com, the 'Asia Business Index', designed for audiences interested in Asian business stories.

Jeremy is the Editor of the Economics and Business Centre, and is responsible for overseeing all daily business output for news outlets in the BBC - including television, radio, and online.

Prior to his latest post, Jeremy ran the BBC's New York Bureau, and has lived and worked in Singapore, Hong Kong, Brussels and Washington, covering many of the defining stories of the last 20 years including 9/11, Boxing Day Tsunami, and the Gulf War when he was based in Qatar and Baghdad.

Now that I've got the profile out of the way, let me say that Jeremy and I kicked it off at once... given some of our commonalities (Jeremy also has a couple of young children, one of which was born during his stint in Singapore), there was no shortage of conversation.

Accompanying Jeremy was the very lovely, Francesca Unsworth. A very unassuming but obviously very powerful woman in the world news circle, Francesca is ultimately responsible for all journalists across the globe - whether at home or on assignment overseas.

Once again, there was a group of local bloggers at the event, many of whom I had never met before (how is that possible?) - it was great to meet up again with my good friend and fellow Hong Kong traveller, Jerome.